Titanfall's mech spawning explained: it's possible for everyone on the map to pilot a Titan

As seen at E3, Titanfall will let you call down giant mechs for you to stomp around the map. That's all well and good, but just how often will you be able to order a mech? What's the ratio of being in a mech to not being in a mech? And just how many mechs can be squeezed into a map? These, and other mech-centric question, have now been answered by Respawn's community manager Abbie Heppe.

The game's Titans will be available on a countdown timer, reveals Heppe in an interview with MKGaming . "You can decrease the amount of time it takes to call in a Titan by completing objectives and getting kills. Once you lose your Titan the countdown starts again. It is possible that everyone in the match could have a Titan on the battlefield at the same time."

That's potentially a lot of mechs, but Respawn's maps have larger areas designed to fit them in. "We have to have maps that support not only the Titans which are over 20 feet tall but also human-sized Pilots," Heppe said, "so even our "smaller" maps are pretty large comparatively. What's cool is each map has areas for Titans and areas for Pilots, so you get these smaller maps built into the larger ones and all these cool pathways through them."

Titanfall is due out next year for PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. While Heppe acknowledged the differences between the platforms, she refused to specify how that would affect the three versions of the game. "There will be differences because the platforms are different but the game isn't finished yet so I can't go into detail about what they might be." Progression systems and character classes were similarly confirmed, but not detailed.